Reviews

Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy

Another great part of The Bourne Conspiracy are its interactive cut-scenes, which require you to press buttons as they are displayed on the screen within a limited amount of time. We've seen this type of things in a ton of games lately (most notably the God of War series), but Bourne is arguably the best implementation yet because it negates most of the standard drawbacks that are common to these kinds of sequences.

When one of these interactive cut-scenes is about to occur, you'll hear a sort of hooting alert that sounds kind of like a hyperactive owl. This telegraphs what's coming, so you're always prepared before the first button appears on the screen. This alone addresses a major criticism of interactive cut-scenes: the disconnect they cause when they unexpectedly interrupt an ongoing gameplay sequence. But in Bourne they also happen to mesh logically with the nature of the character by helping to demonstrate the automatic nature of his preternatural reaction time. The man is trained to kill instantly and without thought, so the hooting alert makes for a great metaphor for this instinctual muscle memory that takes over when he's attacked.

The Bourne Conspiracy also provides you with a decent amount of time during the interactive scenes within which to execute the necessary button presses, which is something that has traditionally proven to be difficult in most games that utilize them. Following the hooting, a series of rapid beeping noises (reminiscent of the sound effect made famous by Lee Major's "The Six Million Dollar Man") let you know approximately how long you have to press the button, removing the guesswork, but not the challenge. The interplay between these two sound effects provides you with everything you need to succeed, but they do so in a fairly unobtrusive way and eventually become ingrained in your muscle memory, much like Bourne's own moves.

Downer Drive

While Bourne may be the perfect weapon, The Bourne Conspiracy isn't the perfect game, and as such has a few places where it falters. The worst offenses occur during the driving level (note the singular usage, indicating that there is thankfully only one), which feels tacked on and poorly conceived. Although the graphics are still impressive in the level, the handling on the Mini Cooper is just this side of atrocious; the car feels floaty and lacks weight (and not just because it's a Mini). Even worse, despite the stated objective of smashing through as much debris as possible in order to build up adrenaline (which slows time to make maneuvering less of a pain), collision with another vehicle will bring you to a grinding halt and likely spin you around so that you're facing the wrong direction. It's an annoying ordeal, which is thankfully only lasts one level.

Shooting, which is a common practice in The Bourne Conspiracy, is not especially great, but nowhere near as hideous as the driving. At worst, the shooting seems mediocre due to the fussy lock-on targeting which is hit or miss. Ideally, using Bourne Instinct (pressing the Y button) during a firefight serves as a sort of lock-on, but it's not always accurate and doesn't always update once you've drawn a bead, so you'll sometimes pop out of cover and empty a clip into the spot where an enemy was seconds earlier. A more robust lock-on system would have been appreciated, but manual targeting isn't all that terrible.

At around 10 to 15 hours, The Bourne Conspiracy isn't exactly a brief experience, but its addictive and gratifying combat can certainly make it feel so. As visually appealing as the game's graphics are, they are dwarfed by the entrancing core melee gameplay... which is no small feat. Whether or not you follow the films and books is irrelevant to your potential enjoyment of The Bourne Conspiracy, because it so brilliantly communicates the story's themes. The resulting combination of fierce fighting, fantastically integrated interactive cut-scenes and just plain awesome graphics punctuate the sad story of this amnesiac elite operative in a thoroughly entertaining package.